Watch this lesson — it zooms into each panel as it’s explained.
Importing Media & Starting a Project
FilmCraft doesn’t copy your footage into a special library — it links to the files on your disk. Import tells FilmCraft where they are.
Importing
- Choose File → Import (or drag files straight into a bin).
- Select video, photo, or audio files from Finder/File Explorer.
- They appear in your bins (folders in the project panel).
Files FilmCraft can open
- Video: H.264 MP4, HEVC/H.265, ProRes, MOV, DNxHD/DNxHR, VP8/VP9, AV1, MJPEG, AVI, MXF, and MPEG-2.
- Images: JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, TIFF, BMP (animated GIF and APNG import as clips).
- Audio: WAV, AAC, MP3, FLAC, ALAC, Vorbis, Opus, AC-3.
Not yet: camera RAW, and AV1 export. If a clip won’t open, it’s usually an unsupported codec — convert it to H.264 MP4 first.
Starting a project
- File → New Project.
- Import your media into bins.
- Double-click a clip to preview it in the Source monitor.
Bins & organization
Make bins for different kinds of footage — e.g. “Interviews,” “B-roll,” “Music.” Right-click in the project panel to create a bin, then drag files into it. Clean bins save you time on every project.
Exact time (why edits never drift)
Under the hood, FilmCraft measures time in integer ticks (254,016,000,000 per second), which divides evenly by every frame rate and sample rate. That means 23.976, 29.97 drop-frame, and 59.94 are exact — no rounding drift.
Try it yourself
Create a new project, make two bins (“Video” and “Audio”), import a few files, and double-click one to preview it in the Source monitor.
Course on media.sacaa.org — free for any visitor, no login required. Work through lessons in order.